Meanwhile the ministers of the Bakafu were “like men who have lost their lanterns on a dark night.” Their lives were worth less than a brass _tem-pō_. Amid the tottering framework of government, they yet strove manfully to keep their treaty engagements. “No men on earth could have acted more honorably.”[58] All the foreign ministers struck their flags, and retired to Yokohama, except Mr. Harris. He, despite the assassination, January 14, 1861, of Mr. Heusken his interpreter, maintained his ground in solitude. English and French battalions were landed at Yokohama, and kept camp there for over twelve years. On the 21st of January, 1862, another embassy was despatched to Europe and the United States. Their purpose was to obtain postponement of treaty provisions in regard to the opening of more ports. In New York, they paid their respects to the widow of Commodore Perry, meeting also his children and grandchildren. Plots and counterplots in Kiōto and Yedo, action and reaction in and between the camp and the throne went on, until, on the 3rd of January, 1868, two days after the opening of Hiogo and Ozaka to trade, the coalition of daimiōs hostile to the Bakafu or Tycoon’s, government, obtained possession of the Mikado’s palace and person. The imperial brocade banner of chastisement was then unfurled, and the “Tycoon” and all who followed him stamped as _chō-téki_ traitors—the most awful name in Japanese history. One of the first acts of the new government, signalizing the new era of Meiji, was to affix the imperial seal to the treaties, and grant audience to the foreign envoys. In the civil war, lasting nearly two years, the skill of the southern clansmen, backed by American rifles and the iron-clad ram, _Stonewall_, secured victory. Yedo was made the _Kiō_ or national capital, with the prefix of Tō (east), and thenceforward, the camp and the throne were united in Tōkiō, the Mikado’s dwelling place.